


love is not a battlefield (i am no hercules)

by hoosierbitch



Category: White Collar
Genre: Friendship/Love, Healing, Multi, PTSD, Rape Recovery, Threesome - F/M/M, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-27
Updated: 2010-05-27
Packaged: 2017-10-09 18:21:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/90222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoosierbitch/pseuds/hoosierbitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's not okay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love is not a battlefield (i am no hercules)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lostandalone22](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=lostandalone22).



> This was written for lostandalone22, for their generous bid at Sweet Charity! They requested a fic about Neal dealing with the fallout of noncon in prison. And I have to say, doing research for this fic, RAINN's website was the one that came up most often, and was the most helpful - so if any of y'all have any spare money to donate, please do check them out!
> 
> WARNINGS: references to noncon, themes of PTSD and triggering (if you have specific questions about what is/isn't in the story, please feel free to contact me!).
> 
> Huge thanks to photoash and themkshrine for their wonderful betaing - any remaining mistakes are all mine!

The first time Neal was in Greece, he'd had a lot of time to kill.

He spent the long dry days eating greasy pastries stuffed with spinach and feta and being a tourist. He read plays while sitting in the amphitheater and watched tour group after tour group walk to the center of the stage. They said the stupidest shit and were all ridiculously pleased when they heard their voices echo outwards. He looked at them and read. Heracles was one of Kate's favorite plays. She loved the classics, and not just the cons.

So he knows that to the Greeks madness was not a disease, but a goddess. At the time it had seemed like a clumsy plot device.

_Lyssa_, who wielded flashbacks like lightning bolts, overwhelming and violent. She threw them with perfect aim. She's the reason why Hercules murdered his children. She hit him with memory like a lightning bolt and in the next second his sword was in his hand and his children were enemies, he thought he was at war and he knew, he _knew_, down to his bones, that if he did not fight then he would die. Hercules fought to get back to his family and when he got home, he killed them.

Neal had fought, too. At first.

But four years is a long time and Neal is no Hercules.

Madness does not restrict her hate to heroes, and when Neal gets out of prison she decides to stalk him. Her quiver is full. Neal can feel her watching. Feel the memories threaten.

He outruns her for as long as he can. And when she catches up it's so much worse than he ever could have dreamed, back in the careless days, sitting under the Greek sun and licking feta off his lips and thinking of Kate. Because he is half as strong as Hercules and just as helpless.

* * *

_The first time they try to fuck, it goes like this:_

"Fuck, _yes - _"

They're tumbling into bed. All three of them breathless and he's laughing because Peter can't seem to get his tie undone and Neal's still got his socks on (which isn't sexy, no matter how cold his toes are going to get) and El's twisting around backwards to unhook her bra and then Peter crawls on top of him. Straddles his hips with a smile like a challenge, huge and close and private.

Peter's hands are rough.

_The first time they try to fuck, it goes wrong like this:_

The last time that Neal was with another person (_not 'having sex' with another person, it wasn't sex, no matter that they were naked and there was kissing and they both came, it wasn't sex, it_ wasn't) his hands had been tied to the bedposts. Pillow case bindings because they'd all been making do with whatever they had. Crayons instead of paint, toothbrushes made into knives, Neal stretched out and open instead of wives or girlfriends or partners. Cheap, rough cotton around his wrists. They hadn't been long enough to give him any slack. He'd had no room to struggle (_not that he would have. It had been a long time since he'd fought back_).

And when Peter's strong, capable hands close around his wrists –

It doesn't fade into memory. Doesn't _remind_ him of what had come before. Peter holds him down mid-laugh and then – then he's being laughed at and fucked until he bleeds, helpless and silent. Peter tries to kiss him and Neal's back in prison, the last of Peter's laugh a sickening trigger, he knows these sensations and they have nothing to do with _safe_.

Not even a second. Barely even time for the sensation to register, _weight on his arms, the press of his limbs into the mattress,_ and he's gone. Neal's somewhere else and Peter _becomes_ someone else, an endless string of bodies and faces and cocks and hands and makeshift restraints.

The flashback is instantaneous and Neal lashes out.

He hits Peter. Twice. Shoves Elizabeth when she moves closer to him, knocks the breath from her body, she falls back against the bed.

And when the last of the madness leaves him (Lyssa flown away to torment someone else, someone else who didn't know what they possibly could have done to deserve this) he realizes that he's crouched between the bed and the wall like a pathetic cornered animal. And his knuckles are bleeding and Peter's got a cut over his cheekbone and a split lip and Neal doesn't even make it to the bathroom.

Laughter and rough hands and he'd hurt Peter, hurt Peter the same way he'd been hurt. He pukes on the hardwood floors until there's nothing left to come up.

"I'm so sorry," he says, on his knees, staring at the puddle of sick in front of him. "I'm so sorry."

* * *

He tries to ignore it.

He tells them that he doesn't like being held down, but that as long as they steer clear of that, he'll be fine.

He thinks it's the truth.

The next time they get a bit further. Neal's got his shirt off and he's on top of El, Peter lying beside her, one hand teasing her nipple and the other stroking his dick. El tugs at Neal's hair to get him to join their kiss.

That time, he makes it to the bathroom before he pukes.

* * *

He's not okay.

* * *

It's a new experience for Neal. Not being able to trust his own body.

Sure, he's hated it before – his lips and eyes and ass, the parts of him that they called pretty one-too-many times. The parts of him that people lusted after, the ones that people reach for. The ones that react - his dick and balls and nipples, the parts that make it harder to prove that he didn't want it.

When Peter pats him on the shoulder or bumps him when they go through a doorway or their knees bang together under too-small lunch tables, Neal's stomach lurches.

Because he doesn't know what's going to trigger it. El's fingers twined with his or her head on his shoulder or Peter slinging an arm around his torso – Neal cannot trust his body. For a long time, he doesn't touch anyone, and he makes sure that no one has the chance to touch him.

After weeks of nightmares and flinching he goes to Peter and says that maybe he needs some help.

It's one of the hardest things he's ever done.

Peter just nods. And says okay. And sets up an appointment for him with a shrink.

* * *

Her name is Sharon and she reminds him a bit of June, only she's five feet tall and Jewish. He likes her but doesn't trust her, which is par for the course with him, lately.

Elizabeth and Peter are waiting on him to get fixed and he doesn't know how long their offer will stand so he forces himself to be honest with Sharon, which is difficult for so many reasons. He sits on her overstuffed couch in her perfectly lovely office, stares at her collection of hummingbird statues, and talks about being raped.

"How does it make you feel?" she asks.

And most of the time Neal likes her but sometimes the whole thing seems like a farce, a cliché, a bad sketch on Candid Camera. "Bad," he says, a reflexive sneer twisting his lips. Then he takes a deep breath and counts back from ten. "I mean - " he thinks about it. Thinks about the rush of adrenaline through his body, the terror that floods him in an instant. "Angry," he says. Because fear is only the beginning.

"Why?"

Why? Why is he angry? It sits inside of him. A well of emotion like tar, every breath he takes brings him closer to the heart of it, why is he angry? He doesn't know.

But that's not fair, not to her and not to him and not to Peter and Elizabeth. _Why is he angry?_

"I want – I want to have sex," he says, and laughs a little because it sounds so stupid. He wants to fall asleep in someone else's bed and feel lips wrapped around his dick and _kiss_ someone – he wants to be able to love with more than just his heart. "I want to have sex, and I can't, because of what someone else did. And it's not fair."

And he feels like he's five years old and ancient in the same breath. It's not fair. It's the truth and it's simple and unavoidable and stupid. "It's not fair," he says again, because it's _not_, because he – because he doesn't deserve what happened to him. What's still happening to him.

He's crying and she doesn't even blink and he's glad because if she'd so much as looked at the box of tissues on the coffee table he's pretty sure he would have punched her (the same way he had Peter, black eyes and butterfly bandages in the morning). "I'm angry because – because it's like - I'm not there anymore," he explains, a truth he loves to repeat, it becomes more precious every time he says it. "I'm not there, it's over, I went through it and survived it and I thought – " he'd been so stupid.

"I thought I'd get out of prison and I would get to leave it behind," he says, with a helpless shrug. Because he has no tally marks for this new imprisonment, this unfamiliar threat. He has no deadline to look forward to, no release. Just weekly counseling sessions that leave him raw and nauseous and dangerous with fear.

"Those are very good reasons to be angry," she says.

"I know," he replies, doing his best not to hate her for doing her job.

"Who are you angry with?" she asks, in her careful voice. She's got her legs crossed and her hands folded and if they were playing poker he'd be able to clean her out in minutes but they're not. She's got the chips and Neal's got to show her all of his cards and he never learned how to play this game. Being honest. He doesn't like it.

"I don't know all their names." There were too many of them. He was unconscious for some of it, drugged or blindfolded or just – just _not there_.

"Are you angry with anyone else?" she asks. And it's a leading question, he knows where it's going, and he glares at her because even though she'd said that he didn't have to answer every question, he owes Peter and Elizabeth. He _wants_ Peter and Elizabeth. He's going to answer every question.

"Me," he says. Because at the end of the day, when he's falling asleep alone, he knows that it's his body and his mind that have betrayed him.

And then he stands up and grabs his coat and takes some petty satisfaction in slamming the door on his way out.

* * *

Peter's the only one who doesn't get nightmares.

Neal relives the worst of it every night. Wakes up soaked in sweat and terrified and shakes through the long minutes before he remembers that he's free.

El – El has nightmares about what happened to him, too. Collages of things she's read or seen on TV or heard from friends. Nightmares of Neal being hurt.

He feels sick with guilt, watching her lose sleep over him. He tells Sharon about it and she suggests that they both start journals. Of what they dream about, how they feel when they wake up. Any good moments they have during the day.

He buys El a nice notebook and a box of colored pens and writes _sorry_ on the inside cover. And now when he goes over to their house he sees it on the coffee table, or on the kitchen counter, or poking out of her purse, the pen tucked into the pages. The circles slowly start to fade from around her eyes.

Neal does not like his journal. He buys four different ones and even makes his own before he has to admit that it's not the journal that's the problem, but him.

Peter's the one who suggests he try drawing.

He balks at first. Because art has always been a safe place for him and he doesn't want to lose it. Doesn't want to sully it. But the nightmares get worse and one night he bites through his lip, the next he wakes June because he's screaming.

So he paints. And they're not particularly good paintings. Some are crude and some are cartoonish and some are painstakingly literal. Sometimes he thinks he gets it right. The way he feels like he's been bleeding out for years from a wound he can't locate. The way he feels anger inside of him like a well of tar, or a black hole, sometimes it sucks him in and other times it's just quicksand, slowing him down – it's always dark, it always hurts, and sometimes he gets it onto the canvas and he can look at it and acknowledge that it terrifies him.

He hides the paintings from everyone but Sharon. She asks permission and he gives it and she runs her fingers over the edges, the ridges of paint, over layer upon layer of rich, decadent color.

His nightmares change from scenarios to images, and he paints them to get them out of his head, and then he shows them to Sharon, and then he burns them. It feels like raising a middle finger to his subconscious. _I know what you are. You can't control me._ It's not always true, but sometimes, as he watches the black paint curl into ash, it feels like maybe it could be.

* * *

"Do you like running?" he asks Peter, staring at his fingers and concentrating on not drumming them nervously against the window.

"Well, since there's usually someone with a gun chasing me, no, not really."

"That's not strictly true. A lot of times you're the one doing the chasing. You're a very good chaser," he says. And turns to stare out of the window.

"Neal? Why did you ask?"

He gives up on trying not to blush and thunks his head against the window. "Sharon. She says I should get regular exercise. Or whatever. Get my endorphins going, or something like that. I don't know." He tries to catch a glimpse of Peter out of the corner of his eye, but he just looks thoughtful.

"The FBI's got a workout room," Peter says. "There's no track, but there are treadmills. Will that work?"

It works. And they make it a routine. Every day at noon they go to the gym and change into shorts and t-shirts (Peter's shorts and t-shirts, because Byron's closet was lacking in some areas, and there's something comforting about wearing Peter's clothes). And they watch the news on the gym TV and run and it feels – it feels great, and he grumbles when he admits it to Sharon, but – but his muscles burn and he's not afraid of remembering why. His body hurts but it's a comfort.

He starts to trust his body again. Running next to Peter and arguing about the DOW and eating leftovers from El's fancy dinners and wearing Peter's clothes. Peter starts clapping him on the back again, and Neal doesn't jump anymore. He leans against Peter's side as they eat lunch and Peter puts his arm over Neal's shoulders as awkwardly as a seventh-grader, it always makes Neal smile.

Three weeks in, they sit down in the locker room and take off their shoes and things change. Peter's upper lip is dotted with sweat and it's close and Neal doesn't realize what he's doing and then he leans in and licks it off. For a long moment Peter doesn't move. For a long moment, Neal knows that he wants Peter to kiss him back.

And then Peter takes Neal's bottom lip between his teeth. And slowly teases his way upwards, until they're kissing, lip to lip in a soft, chaste way and Neal can't ever remember being kissed like this before.

Peter doesn't touch him until he pulls away. And then he just wraps his arms around him and holds him while he shakes

"Too much?" Peter asks.

"No," he answers. And his lips are tingling and his cock's half-hard and he feels good. He feels _good_, in his body and with Peter and it's the smallest, ugliest victory he's ever had to claim. Because right up until that moment, he hadn't thought that he would get to have this again. "No. It was perfect."

* * *

"So. I kissed Peter," he tells Sharon, and it comes out a bit more confrontational than he'd intended.

"That's wonderful," she says, and she's smiling and then he is, too, proud and nervous and sharing his accomplishment with someone who will understand what a milestone it is.

"We didn't do anything else, but not because I got nervous or had a flashback."

"Did you want to do more?"

He forces himself to think past the knee-jerk _yes_, because it seems like he's perpetually horny, Peter just gets more and more attractive, he's started wearing sleeveless tee's when they work out.

"I don't know," he says.

"What do you think would happen," she asks, and he likes this voice because it means she doesn't know the answer, either – "if you tried to do more, and it didn't work?"

What would happen? He thinks about Peter and Elizabeth and how patient they've been. How easily they wait. How honestly happy they are every time he touches them, even a little, or stays at their house until late in the evening, watching TV or working on a case.

He thinks of the bruise he left on Peter's face, and then how scared they'd all been. Thinks about Peter bringing in lunch to work every day so they'd have time to run, and El losing sleep over him – he smiles. "I think it would be okay," he says. They could stop and start again, they could take it slow, they could experiment together. "I think it would be okay."

* * *

He and Peter kiss every day after they work out. It's tentative and sweaty and Neal spends every morning looking forward to it, and every afternoon absentmindedly touching his lips.

But every time they try to take things further – Peter's hands on his neck or his waist or even just tracing the lines of his face – well. No one's ever kissed him the way Peter kisses him, but there are only so many ways to touch, and it seems like every single way has a bad memory attached.

Peter's hand on his neck and he's being held down over a table being fucked by two men at once, his hand traces down Neal's back and he's in the laundry room, bent over the washer, shaking with nausea.

He's got techniques, now, for reminding himself that he's in the FBI locker room and not a prison cell. He breathes deeply, uses his other senses to remember where he is, he repeats _it's just a flashback, it's just a flashback_ over and over until his brain slows down and he can believe it.

Every time it happens he feels shaky and anxious for the rest of the day, so Peter stops touching him with anything but his lips. Neal can touch him, though - his soft hair, his biceps, his hands. Peter's arms stay loose at his side, but Neal can't stay still. There's so much of Peter that he wants to touch. He's pretty sure Peter jerks off in the shower afterwards, but they take stalls at the opposite ends of the row so he doesn't have to know.

* * *

Neal doesn't work on all of the cases that come through the white collar crime unit. Some of them are beyond his clearance level, some are in areas he's not familiar with – and sometimes, they (Peter or Hughes or some third party) just don't trust him enough.

Which is a bit irritating. But it does mean that some days he actually gets to go home at five.

The sixth time that Elizabeth comes over for dinner on one of his early evenings (fourth time since the incident, third since he started therapy), they kiss.

They're standing next to each other at the counter and she's making a gin and tonic and he's hunting for the pepper. And she wipes her mouth on the back of her hand and there's something casual and absentminded about it, so he leans in, and places a quick peck on her cheek. And then goes back to searching for the pepper shaker.

The thing is. The thing is, it's different with Elizabeth. Which makes him feel incredibly guilty because he knows, when he is coherent and the world is clear and exciting and his to win, he _knows_ that Peter would never hurt him.

But he _could_. And that's all that matters to his body.

"Are you sure?" she asks, after they've plopped down on the couch and eaten while sharing their collective horror over Fox's new reality show, when a long pause arrives and they lean in towards each other again.

"Not really," he says with a shrug, because he's not sure about much these days. "Is that – is that alright?"

She nods and looks at his lips and it's easy, it's easy to lean in and kiss her, it's easy to gasp when she licks at his teeth, it's incredibly hard to sit back when she starts to run her hands up his arms and his skin begins to crawl.

"Right, um. Maybe we shouldn't do that," he says, staring at his knees, fighting to get his body back under his control. "Yet."

He clenches his teeth and waits for her to pity him.

"If they ever remake _Queer Eye_, we should nominate Peter," she says, putting her hand over his and looking back at the TV.

He lets out a shaky breath and holds her hand. "It would be a disaster. We totally should."

And it hurts because he doesn't want to take it slow. Because he's not a goddamn virgin, he knows what pleasure is just beyond his grasp, he knows how much closer he could feel to Elizabeth and Peter, to himself, to his own life.

So they cook together and chat and make out against the counter, stopping every few minutes to stir the pasta or add something to the sauce. And slowly, painfully slowly, they make progress. She can touch his face, now, when they're kissing. His face and his neck, and his upper arms as long as she's not on top of him and his back's not against the wall.

* * *

A month after that, he ties her up. To his bed. Cheesy pink handcuffs around her wrists. She strips herself naked and he locks her in and it works. He leaves hickeys on her neck and breasts and stomach, she gives him her trust.

There's a hitch when she puts her legs over his shoulders when he's going down on her, a bit too much weight in the wrong place, one too many memories of being held down. He pulls back and catches his breath and she brushes her foot softly against his thigh and waits until he stops shaking. When he looks at her she shimmies her hips and he laughs and puts his hands on her thighs to hold her down while he sucks another hickey on her hip.

* * *

He and Peter run and he and Elizabeth fuck. Once or twice a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. He never thought he'd sleep with El without Peter - but Peter doesn't seem to be the jealous type. He seems happy for them. Genuinely, honestly happy.

"It's going to be different for all of us," he'd said with a shrug, after the first time. Neal's stomach had been tied in knots, convinced despite Elizabeth's reassurances that this would mean the end. "It's good that you feel comfortable with her. I hope that you can feel that way with me, some day."

Neal had looked at Peter's long fingers circling the rim of his beer bottle and hoped for that, too.

* * *

"I'm going to fuck you both," Neal says, walking into their house. Peter's face freezes in the middle of his _use-the-doorbell_ expression and something falls off of El's fork, halfway to her mouth. "Hi."

"You should really use the doorbell," El says, and Neal looks at her with his best puppy-dog face because it's just not fair if they gang up on him (he doesn't follow that thought any further because ganging up can mean too many different things, so he just looks at it and lets it go, breathes deep and steps into the living room).

"I'm saving electricity," Neal says, even though he can feel a surplus of it coursing through his body. "Global warming's real, you know."

El puts her fork down and pulls out the chair next to her. "And every time I watch March of the Penguins, I feel very badly about that."

"You feel bad," Neal corrects. "If you feel badly, it means there's something wrong with the mechanisms with which you feel – " he's only a few steps closer to their table and it's a good thing his hands don't sweat this much when he's on a job, he'd never be able to pick a lock like this. "_You_ feel bad," he explains. "_I_ feel badly." Not even his therapist would disagree with that, but El still looks sad and Peter still looks angry.

"Come and eat dinner," Peter says, pointing at the empty chair. "We've got enough pasta for three."

"I don't want pasta. I want you." He's not above begging. "Please," he says, and they're good people, they see _hurt_ and they want to fix it.

"What does your therapist say?" Peter asks, wiping a bit of tomato sauce off his cheek.

"A lot of things," Neal answers.

"What did she say about you having sex with Peter?" El asks, and Peter shifts uncomfortably in his chair. He's still a bit awkward around frank discussions of sexuality. Which is a bit infuriating, given the circumstances, but mostly endearing.

"She said – " she had said a lot of things. Given him a few statistics but mostly questions, questions that chased themselves around in his head over and over. _What do you want, how confident do you feel, do you think you'd be able to tell them to stop?_ "I want this," he says. "I want you. That's – she didn't say no." She'd supported him when he'd said yes. He fights down the urge to bite his fingernails and waits to see if they say yes, too.

"Okay," El says softly. Peter looks at her, eyes wide, and then back at Neal.

"But what about – what about what happened last time?"

"It might happen again," Neal says. "But that – it's not a deal breaker for me, if it's not for you." He takes a hasty step back. "And it's fine, if it is. I mean, I know it's not a whole lot of fun for you, and that's – you've really – " he gave them bruises and they gave him everything but maybe, maybe there was a limit to that, too. "If it is, I can just – go, or wait, or something – "

He turns around and walks towards the door, because _damnit,_ they were in the middle of dinner and there's a difference between romantic spontaneity and unwelcome interruption, and he's off-balance enough right now to fuck that up, too.

Peter's chair screeches on the floor and he looks a bit frantic when he steps in front of Neal at the door. Doesn't grab him, just gets in his way. "It's not a deal breaker," he says. And Neal feels the threat of tears welling up behind his closed eyelids. "I want you, Neal. Whatever you can give me, I want it. Just – just tell me how to touch you," he says, and Neal opens his eyes and moans because Peter's eyes are dark with desire and Neal's spent the last year staring at his hands and he gets to – it's not a deal breaker.

"Kiss me," he orders quietly, and Peter surges forward and presses their mouths together so hard there's barely room for their tongues, barely room for him to open his mouth and breathe, because Peter's there, Peter's there and doing exactly what Neal told him to do. "Stop," he whispers. And Peter freezes.

"Did I do something wrong?" Peter asks, and the words whisper across Neal's cheek, they're still so close.

"No, I just – I just had to catch my breath," he says. He'd just needed to make sure that Peter would stop. If Neal told him to. If Neal needed him to. They could stop. "Can we go upstairs now? All of us?"

"Yeah," Peter says. "Just gotta clean up from dinner – "

"Fuck dinner," El says, pushing past them on her way up the stairs. Peter laughs and Neal kisses him and Peter stands still and lets him.

* * *

_The first time they fuck, it goes like this:_

There are some things that he doesn't tell Sharon. Some things he that doesn't write down in any of his journals, or paint onto any of his canvases.

The way Peter looked, lying on his back, Elizabeth's hands around his wrists, waiting for Neal to come to him. The broad expanse of his skin, his tense muscles, his cock, his lips. Hard and patient and waiting.

The way Peter's hands were so comfortable on El's body, and so careful on Neal's.

The awkwardness of their attempts at three-way kisses.

The way Peter said _thank you_ over and over, until El slipped two of her fingers into his mouth.

Because there are some things that are too precious to share.

He holds those memories close. A shield against the goddess always on his heels. Memories and Peter and Elizabeth, real and warm and close.

_And when they get it right, it goes like this:_

They spill the lube and forget to let Satchmo in from the backyard and they have to stop three times because of Neal, once because El's phone rings, and once more because Peter and El taste like garlic and Neal doesn't and they have to go wash their teeth.

He kisses promises into their skin, their hands reclaim his body, he comes and it feels like dying and breaking and falling and being remade, it feels like sanity.

It's the first time in a long time that he has things of his own. Beautiful, precious things. His body and his life and sleeping naked in someone else's bed – those things are his, he fought for them, worked for them, he _earned_ them. He holds them in shaking hands and knows that they can't be taken away.

_It ends like this_:

He's theirs and they're his. That, he tells Sharon, and paints over and over and over again. And those paintings, he does not burn.


End file.
